However, Aberdeen's outflows have been pretty steady throughout the year. On a net basis, more funds were withdrawn in the first half the year than the second.

Net fund withdrawals were at their lowest in the three months that followed the Brexit vote.

Three months to:

31 Dec 2015

31 Mar 2016

30 June 2016

30 Sept 2016

Total

Inflows

£10.9bn

£10.5bn

£9.2bn

£8.4bn

£39.0bn

Outflows

£20.0bn

£18.2bn

£18.1bn

£15.5bn

£71.8bn

Net

£9.1bn

£7.6bn

£8.9bn

£7.2bn

£32.8bn

Despite the fall in profits, investors reacted positively to the annual results, especially on the news that the dividend would be maintained.

Analysts at Cenkos said: "A year ago we warned that Aberdeen would face a tough year and it has done so, but it has faced those difficult conditions with considerable resilience and, importantly, shareholders have seen a maintained dividend at 19.5p per share declared, a yield of 6.8 per cent."

What the company said

Chief executive Martin Gilbert told City A.M. there are many headwinds currently facing the fund management industry.

Asked how the business would change in 2017, he said: I think it’s just about managing the business more efficiently.”

“I think it’s going to be tough times for the industry. And we just have to manage our businesses more efficiently. By that I mean look at how we do things. Fund managers tend to have a lot of manual processes.”

He added that this does not necessarily mean cost-cutting. “We’re just very manual in the way we go about things,” he said.

“The more we can automate things, the more we can do things straight through processing and take out the manual intervention, the less scope there is for error. If there are errors, that costs you money, you’ve got to rectify it. So it’s more about that than anything else.”

Future political and economic events, including the UK's negotiations to exit the EU, the start of President-elect Trump's term in office and European elections, will contribute to ongoing volatility in global markets in the short term.

However, until there is greater clarity, it is difficult to predict the impact on markets over the medium and longer term.